https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/13/hacktivism_is_having_a_resurgence/
Feature From triggering a water tank overflow in Texas to shutting down Russian state news services on Vladimir Putin’s birthday, self-styled hacktivists have been making headlines. But don’t let the Guy Fawkes avatars fool you. Today’s “hacktivists,” especially those going after critical infrastructure, often have less in common with just the digital vandals of the Nineties and Naughts than with government-backed cyber operators. Threat intel analysts say their tactics, targets, and timing suggest something calculated, and far more connected to nation-state interests. Earlier this year, operational technology cybersecurity firm Dragos revealed that in April 2024, pro-Ukraine hacktivist crew BlackJack compromised a Moscow municipal organization that maintains the city’s communication system for a gas, water, and sewage network. After pwning routers and sensor gateways, the gang deployed OT-specific malware dubbed Fuxnet, which Dragos reckons is only the eighth-known industrial control system malware in existence. While there haven’t yet been large-scale destructive attacks (in Western countries, at least) that can be traced back to hacktivists, many of today’s groups have ties to government intelligence agencies and growing connections to offensive cyber units. It’s all keeping network defenders on their toes and giving them a reason to keep tabs on these politically and socially minded crews. …
Interesting is the sidebar – usual preface this is about the security / privacy aspect only to the exclusion of everything else :
Canadian cops last month held Aubrey Cottle, 37, of Oshawa, Ontario, who is facing criminal charges in America after allegedly stealing data from the Texas Republican Party in 2021. According to a newly unsealed complaint [PDF] filed in September 2024, Cottle compromised Epik, a third-party hosting company used by the Texas Republican Party, and then exploited this access to deface the Texas GOP website, replacing it with cartoon characters, a pornographic image, and a music video. Plus, in addition to allegedly defacing the website, Cottle, said to be an early member of the Anonymous hacktivist collective who used the moniker “Kirtaner” in online forums, is accused of grabbing a copy of a Texas GOP Apache web-server deployment containing 180 GB of personal identifying information before making this stolen data available for download. …
I’m sure SOMEtime along the way, a statement from SOMEone was released stating that security and privacy were seriously.
/sarcasm
Regards